


Under Cover of Stars

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Escape, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19120276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: When Peggy and Daniel broke into Isodyne Labs, they didn't exactly expect to find themselves on the run in a maintenance pod that wasn't rated for deep space. Theydefinitelydidn't expect Jack Thompson to throw himself in front of blaster fire to get them away safely. But maybe what started out as a mission gone wrong can be the start of something new...





	Under Cover of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oh_simone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/gifts).



> Non-canon AU is a bit of a new thing for me, but you mentioned space opera AU's and my brain kind of ran away with it. Hope you enjoy!

“Well,” Peggy said, peering down at the unconscious, gray-faced, and bloody form of Jack Thompson, currently half-submerged in their one working regen tank as the nanites knit together what had been an incredibly nasty chest wound. “He’s going to wake up any minute now. What should we do with him?”

“We could shove him out the airlock,” Daniel suggested, but the ire in his voice was half-hearted at best. Peggy felt much the same. Thompson hadn’t done much of anything to recommend himself to her in all the time they’d been colleagues—rather the opposite, in fact—but he’d managed to redeem himself in dramatic and unexpected style in the last few hours. If it weren’t for him, Masters and his squad would still be on their tails. Or they’d be dead and, far worse, the canisters of Zero Matter they were transporting would be back in the hands of the Council.

She’d really thought they were finished, until Jack charged in, guns blazing, to cover their exit. Daniel also looked slightly shell-shocked about it, although at least some of that had to be the pain. His jaw was set in a grimace as he massaged his leg above the prosthetic implants; he wasn’t even trying to hide it from her, which meant that it had to be bad. He’d taken a hit directly to the leg during their escape. The prosthetic would probably survive, but the neural implants meant that he could feel every bit of it as if it was his own flesh and bone. Hopefully, she actually had the equipment on hand they needed to repair it properly. Their precipitous escape hadn’t exactly been planned, and the short-range pods weren’t designed for anything more than ship repair or planetside jaunts. Thank all the gods above and below for Howard Stark and his aftermarket modifications, or they’d be dead in the black already.

As it was, they’d be cutting it awfully close on life support before they could make it to a planet outside of Council space. Especially with an unanticipated extra person on board.

She didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, she made her voice as light as she could possibly manage under the circumstances, and said, “That seems rather a waste of all the nanites we’ve already used up on healing him. Now. Get your trousers off and let me have a look at that leg.”

Daniel huffed laughter. “At least buy a guy a drink first.”

“You’ve got a dreadfully high opinion of both of our stamina and recovery time if you think…” She trailed off as he undid his buckle and kicked out of his heavy spacer’s trousers. Above the prosthetic, his upper leg was mottled with dark bruising, and there was blood leaking out around the implants. It looked like at least one of them had torn completely loose. He had to be in agony. “Oh, Daniel.”

“Looks worse than it is,” Daniel said, a bald-faced lie if she ever heard one.

“I’m sure.” She reached for the work table behind her. Their infirmary was understocked, but she had neural blockers at least. The capsule hissed as she pressed it to his skin, and an instant later the tense lines of his face relaxed. Only then did she begin her examination.

It was as bad as she’d feared. Two of the implants had torn off entirely, and the main joint of the prosthetic itself was completely shattered. Fortunately, she had replacement parts—enough to jury-rig a temporary solution, at least. Unfortunately, there was no quick way to do it. She sat back on her heels and sighed. Daniel wasn’t going to like it. “I think it’ll work better if we can remove it. It’s going to take me hours to fix this.”

It was a testament to the trust they’d managed to build that instead of arguing he just sighed, reaching to detach the remaining implants. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. But you _can_ fix it, right?”

“Absolutely I can fix it,” Peggy said, with much more confidence than she felt, and looked away to give him some privacy as he pulled the prosthetic away from the stump of his thigh. “I’ll fetch you a crutch. I know we have some in storage.”

Behind her, Daniel said, quietly, “Thanks, Peg. I really appreciate it.”

She was pretty sure he wasn’t just talking about the repairs.

*

She took a moment to send a heavily encrypted message to Howard Stark’s private line explaining their circumstances. He probably wouldn’t respond; there was too much risk of the signal being tracked. But Howard was a friend, for all his flippant devil-may-care attitude, and she owed it to him to tell him that they were alive, at least, after everything that had gone down at the Isodyne base.

Also, hopefully, that they’d need a secure transport once they finally made planetfall on Illea. It wasn’t an ideal location—barely terraformed and a home base for half a dozen pirate fleets who maintained a planetside truce that was shaky at best—but it was the nearest place they could reach that was definitely _not_ under Council control. With the added bonus that any Council ship appearing in orbit would likely be blasted to smithereens and picked over for scrap before it had time to send a signal back to the rest of the fleet.

Now if they could just avoid the same thing happening to _them_ , that would be lovely.

One problem at a time. For now, getting Daniel properly mobile again was the priority. She laid the prosthetic out on her workbench, pulled a protective mask down over her eyes, and got to work.

*

Daniel was still in the infirmary when she returned, fast asleep on one of the uncomfortable cots, trousers back on and pinned up over his stump. He looked rather as though he had just collapsed where she left him, which was entirely likely. It had been a very long day, and she could feel exhaustion dragging at her like a gravity well. She was pretty sure that if she actually took the time to sit down she’d be asleep in seconds. That was precisely why she hadn’t.

Thompson, however, was wide awake. He’d pulled himself out of the regen tank and onto one of the other cots; his trousers were still damp and his bare torso had a faint metallic sheen over where the wound had been, the fresh skin still reddish and tender looking. He was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest like a child, but he straightened when Peggy came in, made a valiant effort at looking nonchalant. “Hey, Carter.”

“Good morning,” she said shortly. “Feeling better?”

“Good as new,” he said, thumping his chest with his fingers. She didn’t miss the wince that followed and just barely managed to restrain herself from rolling her eyes as he jerked his chin at Daniel’s sleeping form. “Your boyfriend seems to be missing a few parts, though.”

Ah, there was the Jack Thompson she knew and loathed. “I’d watch the attitude if I were you. It’s not too late to shove you out the airlock, and it would solve a great many problems for us.”

“After I just saved your hides? That’s cold.”

“I’m sure you stand to profit somehow from that,” she said tartly. 

He laughed. “You just can’t cut a guy a break, can you? Maybe I did it out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Pigs might fly, as the saying goes.”

“I notice you brought me with you and stuck me in a regen tank instead of leaving me to bleed out on Vernon’s ship, though.”

He had her there, unfortunately. “Don’t read too much into it.”

“Believe me, Carter, I won’t.” He glanced at Daniel again. “Is he going to be okay?”

The poorly-concealed concern in his voice surprised her, though she didn’t know why. He’d already thrown in with them, for one thing, and for another… well. She’d always rather got the idea that Jack _liked_ Daniel, under all the belligerent masculine posturing. He was just appallingly bad at showing it, although throwing his own body between Daniel and the Isodyne mercs’ blasters certainly made some sort of statement. 

“He’ll be fine,” she said. She was more or less sure of that. The prosthetic was calibrating and ought to be ready by the time Daniel woke up; there was no need to disturb him now, especially since she was quite sure he didn’t want Jack present for the refitting process. He was still uncomfortable with letting her see it, and they’d certainly seen one another in far more intimate situations than that.

Different kinds of intimacy, perhaps. Sex was a simpler one than that kind of vulnerability.

Jack cleared his throat. “Good. Uh. Do we have a heading, or…?”

Peggy hesitated. Despite what she’d said, she didn’t _really_ believe that Jack was going to sell them out. Reading between the lines, she didn’t think he’d actually expected to survive his own unexpected bout of heroism and was as surprised to be sitting here in (relatively) one piece in the infirmary as she and Daniel were to have him here. But still. Zero Matter was the kind of weapon that unscrupulous robber barons like Chadwick and Masters would kill for, and anything they’d kill for, they’d also pay handsomely for.

“We do,” she said finally, shortly. 

Jack dropped his head with a dry bark of laughter. “You really don’t trust me, huh?”

He sounded more amused than offended, but some of the softness had gone out of his face. Peggy shrugged, refusing to feel bad about it. “I haven’t locked you in the brig, have I?”

“Small favors, I guess.” He paused. “Does this pod even have a brig?”

“I’m sure I could figure something out.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt it.” Jack rolled his shoulders, winced, then said, “Anyway, I don’t suppose you have anything I could wear that isn’t covered in blood and regen slime, huh?”

“You’re a rather demanding houseguest,” Peggy said, but she went to the wall cupboard and rooted through if for a moment before coming up with infirmary scrubs and a t-shirt. “There you are. I’m afraid you’ll have to go without underwear, as I’m not sure where Daniel stashed his clothes and I’m certainly not giving you any of mine.”

Jack snorted, color flooding his cheeks. “You’re something else, Peggy.”

It was the first time she’d ever heard him use her first name. He looked embarrassed, half-amused, color flooding his cheeks and his blond hair plastered to his forehead, the careful curl of his spine like he was afraid his body might shatter if he moved too quickly, and something in Peggy’s heart _shifted_ slightly to look at him.

That was a potential revelation that she really didn’t have the time or energy for. She took a step back and said, archly, “I take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” Jack replied.

“Yes, well.” Damn it. She’d already decided to trust him, hadn’t she? Just for that soft way he had looked at Daniel earlier, for the amusement in his blue eyes now, for the memory of his voice over blaster fire yelling _‘Get him the hell out of here, Carter—_ ’

“You look like you could use a nap, too,” he said. “Just saying.”

She could, she really could, but instead she straightened her spine and said, “Thank you for your input, Jack. I’ll be on the flight deck; do please call me the moment Daniel wakes up.”

“You got it, Carter,” he said, still smiling.

And with that, and a feeling that she’d already rather lost control of the situation and she didn’t even know _how,_ she took herself out of the room.

*

She really hadn’t intended to fall asleep. Had not, for that matter, actually intended to sit down, and when she found herself blinking awake to dimmed lights and a bank of starry darkness out the window she was, for a moment, entirely disoriented. 

“Morning,” said a quiet voice to her left.

Peggy let out an embarrassing yelp, flailed, then swore as one hand knocked hard into the control panel. “Ow!”

“Sorry,” Jack added, sounding more or less sincere.

She pulled herself upright, flushing. The flight deck was barely big enough to deserve that name, and the other chair, where Jack was sitting, was close enough that their knees would bump if she turned toward him. She probably ought to be grateful that she hadn’t actually tumbled into his lap with her uncoordinated flailing. “What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t know where else to be." He shrugged slightly. "It seemed kind of presumptuous to take over one of your bunks.”

Ah, of course. Just another inconvenience for her to worry about; there were only two bunks in the pod, and therefore nowhere for Jack to sleep. Well, they could always stash him in the infirmary if need be. “I’m surprised you care.”

He snorted a little. “Anyway, you got a message in a little while ago. Looks like it’s from Stark. I didn’t read it,” he added, off of her look.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You looked like you needed the sleep.” Another little shrug. “Sorry. Here.”

She accepted the datapad from him. The message was unopened; it was encoded heavily enough that Jack wouldn’t have been able to read it in any case, unless he was hiding an extensive skill-set, but he hadn’t even tried.

Another point in his favor, damn it.

“I told Howard not to send any communications,” she murmured mostly to herself, entering the key in quick sure strokes. “If he gets us arrested, I am going to murder him. Ah.”

“What?” Jack asked. 

She considered telling him to mind his own business, but something—the cautious look on his face, maybe, the dimness of the room, the fact that he’d seen the message and left it alone—stopped her. “We have a transport arranged.”

“Oh,” Jack said, and went a little tense. It took her a moment to realize why, and then she rolled her eyes.

“All three of us. I’m not going to abandon you after you threw in your lot with us. I do have _some_ honor.” 

“Oh,” he said again, relaxing back into the seat. He tilted his head up toward the blackness of space, and she looked away. She really didn’t need to be noticing the clean line of his jaw, the sweep of his eyelashes and the way the dim light caught in his blond hair. She already knew Thompson was good-looking; it didn’t change the fact that he was an utter wanker. Although it was easier to ignore when he was just a vague sneering presence lording his good family connections over the rest of them than when he was sprawled in the seat next to her, looking battered and anxious and out of place.

Damn it.

“Why did you help us?” she asked abruptly. “I know you were on track to get your own ship—why throw all that away over this?”

Jack was silent for a long time, long enough that she thought he might not answer at all. Finally, though, he sighed, tipped his head back against the seat, and said, “You know my dad got me the spot on the Fleet, right?”

She nodded shortly. Everyone knew it. The Thompson family had its fingers in political pies across a dozen planets, enough clout to ensure that its favored son ended up with whatever kind of placement he wanted. She was a little surprised, actually, that Jack had joined the Fleet instead of taking some cushy embassy position. “I know.”

“Vernon’s an old friend of my dad’s. He took me under his wing from the get-go. Mentored me. Pushed me up the chain faster than I deserved.”

Another long pause. Peggy didn’t speak. She knew all that, of course, but she was a little surprised to hear Jack state it so baldly.

“And I was fine with that. Glory and honor and all that shit, right?” He laughed, a dry unhappy little sound. “I told myself that even if I hadn’t earned it, I was still doing some good. I was doing a real job, and I was damn good at it.”

There were soft footsteps behind them, the tapping sound of a crutch on the floor, and Jack rolled his head back to look as Daniel made his way up to the deck. He paused at the door; the flight deck was too small to admit all of them. He was braced steadily enough on his crutch, but his face looked gray with pain. Peggy stood up, spinning the chair so that she could get out without climbing over Jack.

“Here,” she said. “I’ve been sitting long enough.”

Daniel gave her a look that said he could see right through her, but he didn’t protest, which meant he had to be in quite a bit more pain than he was letting on. “Thanks, Peg.”

“Anytime, darling,” she said, and cupped his cheek as he passed to draw him into a kiss. She let it go on a little longer than was entirely polite in front of an audience, and when she finally let him go she was pleased to see that he was blushing just a little. Jack had turned his head away from them, staring up into the black, but she was almost certain she could see a flush crawling up the back of his neck. 

Interesting.

She cleared her throat as Daniel sat down, setting his crutch against the wall. “Jack was just telling me, ah,” she paused, unable to think of a delicate way to phrase it.

“How I stopped licking Vernon’s boots and decided to do the right thing,” Jack interjected, very dry. Peggy glanced at him, startled. Not at the snide bluntness; that was the Jack Thompson she knew all over. But she’d been expecting him to clam up when Daniel came in. Instead he was relaxed, chin tilted, almost aggressively vulnerable.

“Well,” Daniel said after a moment. “Better late than never, I guess.”

The tension that had been winding tight through the room cracked, all of a sudden. Peggy let out an unladylike snort. Jack ducked his head, smiling.

“So?” Daniel said. “What’s the story?”

“Not much to it, honestly. You know there was a containment breach after they first found the Zero Matter, right? Couple dozen scientists killed trying to get it back under control?” When they both nodded, he continued. “Vernon decided to put me in charge of the cover-up. Great opportunity to move up the ladder, and a great way for him to test my loyalty at the same time.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Problem is, not everybody wanted to be bought off. So he ordered a more permanent solution.”

“Oh,” Peggy said quietly. “You didn’t—”

Jack flinched like he’d been slapped. “I might be an asshole, Carter, but I’m not that low.”

“So you refused,” Daniel said slowly, and Jack shook his head with a snort of laughter that sounded entirely unamused.

“I’m also not _stupid._ I smuggled them out and made up… some shit to tell Vernon, I don’t even remember. Just a matter of time before he saw through it anyway. And then you two broke into Isodyne and stole all the Zero Matter they had.”

“Thus rendering it a moot point,” Peggy concluded, with a nod. “Alright, then.”

“Alright?” Jack said. “What, that’s it?”

“Nothing more to say, is there?” Daniel asked, voice mild. He was eyeing Jack with a thoughtful kind of expression, and then he looked back at Peggy, raised his eyebrows, and yes, it did seem that they were on the same page about all this. “For better or worse, you’ve thrown in your lot with us now. You poor son of a bitch.”

Jack laughed at that, sounding startled. “Yeah, well. I guess I coulda done worse.”

*

They made it through the cordon around Illea without incident, which was surprising. Less so when they finally broke atmo to find a pirate vessel waiting for them, a small quick transport cruiser that was armed to the teeth. 

“Aw, shit,” Daniel sighed, maneuvering the pod down for a landing. It was too late to even think about trying to run, and there was nowhere for them to go anyway. He reached for a spare blaster pack once they’d set down, loading with quick efficient movements. “Peg, the Zero Matter is stashed, right?”

“Won’t matter if they do a real search,” Jack said, reaching for his own blaster pack. His expression was set like stone. “Look, why don’t you guys—”

Peggy peered out the viewscreen at the ship as it landed a few hundred meters away, taking in the insignia, and felt herself relax slightly. Moreso when the hatch opened and a tall man in gleaming finery that seemed more suited to a Core politician than a pirate leader stepped out onto the packed dirt. He put a hand over his eyes to shade them from the light of the double suns, then made an impatient ‘come on’ kind of gesture.

“I don’t think there’ll be any need for dramatics,” she said, turning back to the other two. “Come along. Let’s go have a chat with our hosts.”

Jack and Daniel both stared at her with matching flabbergasted expressions; it was almost funny, really. Finally, Jack said, in a very flat tone of voice, “What.”

She smiled. “Just come on. Bring your blasters and leave the Zero Matter where it is for now. I recognize that insignia. That’s from the Manfredi Fleet. And if I’m not very mistaken, the gentleman waiting for us is Captain Manfredi himself.”

“And we can trust him?” Daniel asked warily.

“Heavens no,” she said, starting for the hatch. Gratifyingly, they both trailed behind her with no further protest, although she didn’t have to glance back to know that they were both looking at her like they were concerned for her sanity. “But Howard said that he was sending an old friend to escort us to safety. He and Captain Manfredi go quite a ways back.” She shrugged. “If it doesn’t work out, we can always resort to violence.”

“The more I learn about Stark, the more I regret getting involved in this,” Jack muttered, but he hit the airlock button, stood aside as the seals released, filling the hold with dry planetside air. It had a sharply mineral scent to it that was almost overwhelming after weeks of atmo that had been run through processors so many times as to be completely odorless. Overwhelming, and invigorating. Peggy breathed in deeply.

Finally, the hatch opened, the ramp descending in a smooth hiss of hydraulics. She stepped down onto the packed earth beneath, squinting slightly in the searing light, the two men flanking her, and rested the palm of her hand on her blaster as the pirate captain approached. 

He was tall, dark-haired, and when he smiled she could see the gleam of facial augments. His eyes flicked over Jack and Daniel, down at the half-threat of the armed blaster at her hip, and then he said, “Miss Carter, I presume?”

“Agent,” Peggy said coolly.

He laughed. “Yeah, Howard said you’d say that. Joe Manfredi. I hear you kids are in need of a ride.”


End file.
